Being Vs Becoming: Ego And The Sacred

Being versus becoming and being in the presence of the present.

Very linked being versus becoming and being in the presence of the present.

That succinct answer.

There is only now.

But actually in terms of everyday life,

Because there's two things here.

One is we can understand it intellectually with a simple explanation.

We can.

We can understand it intellectually being versus becoming because in the physical world things are becoming all the time,

Right?

Buildings are becoming bigger.

They're being built.

Businesses are becoming less or more.

Trees are becoming with more leaves.

So in other words there's movement of time outside.

So being versus becoming is linked to time.

So becoming is time and it's physical time.

Things are getting older.

They're becoming older or whatever,

Right?

So there is that movement outside in the world and psychologically we tend to do is also get caught in becoming because we're not used to being.

And partly that's our education.

Our education is all about,

Okay,

Get off your butt,

Go out there,

Learn all of this,

Become a better this,

Become a better athlete,

Become a better student,

Whatever it be.

Get out in the world and become a better lawyer or whatever,

Right?

So it's this whole forward movement away from now always.

And if you're ever caught in the physical world in a job,

Sitting,

Being,

You'll get in trouble because you're meant to be doing and moving forward all the time.

So there's never a time for contemplation unless it's something that you've got to really sit with.

You've got some papers,

You're a lawyer,

Got all this information that you've got to weigh up and then you've got to sit with that.

You might be in a state then where you can have this contemplation,

Right?

But generally you're not allowed to sit around.

You've got to be moving forward.

The treadmill's got to keep moving,

Right?

So psychologically we are also therefore in the habit,

And I say habit because it's not your fault if we say human beings are stuck in this.

No,

It's not a condemnation.

The fact is we're caught in becoming,

And we use this a lot in terms of our emotional life,

And we use it a lot in terms of our health,

And we use it a lot in terms of our relationships and other things too.

We use it a lot while we say it's certainly the deep seeds that we need to work on in us,

Which if you look at the deepest,

Darkest things that need to be worked on in each of us as humans,

It would be what?

Violence,

Greed,

Pettiness,

Jealousy,

Envy,

Racism,

Anger,

Right?

So those things there are deep in human beings,

Right?

What we tend to do is a postponement of action.

We never look at them actually.

What we tend to do is say and be taught by others to say,

I will,

Okay,

I'll go home.

Thanks for bringing that to my attention.

I'll go home and I'll work on my envy.

I'll go home and I'll work on my jealousy.

I'll work on my anger.

I'll work on my violence.

I'll work on my pettiness.

I'll work on my bigotry.

I'll work on my racism.

Not understanding that that statement and that realization is a postponement of action,

Because why?

Even the I will work on it is still a postponement of action,

Isn't it?

Because the I,

This is the difference,

Because we're not understanding what the I is generally,

We're not taught about it,

We are using,

Okay,

I will work on it rather than I will try and work on it or I might work on it.

So we think that I will work on it is more definitive,

And it is.

It's a more definitive statement than I'll try and work on it or maybe I'll work on it.

I will work on my anger.

Not understanding though that the I that says I will work on my anger is the anger.

And by saying I will work on my anger,

I'm putting anger as a separate thing to me to work on.

In other words,

I'm up here,

My anger's down there,

This lowly anger and envy and everything else is separate from me and I'm going to work on it.

So firstly,

We need to understand that the I is all of your past as the me.

So that's what makes the I.

That's what makes any of you by your name is your accumulation of your psychological past as the me,

As the I.

All the good things and all the painful things,

All the laughs,

All the cries,

All the conditioning of the past as well,

Not just the memory that conditions you,

The memory can condition you because if you've got constant pain that conditions you into being afraid of the future because I'm hurt all the time.

Now I don't want to be hurt again so I'm projecting that that's how my life will be and I'm always shrinking from the next now.

But there's also the conditioning of culture from the past that makes the I.

The conditioning that if you're born in India,

For example,

You're conditioned by,

As we all are in any culture,

You're conditioned by the sights that conditions you,

The shape of the buildings and the mountains and you're conditioned by the clothing,

You're conditioned by the song,

By the language itself,

By the religious overtones,

By the foods.

All of that is your conditioning,

That's your upbringing,

That's what you're soaked in.

So that makes you who you are as your psychological and your memory and your past.

That's not too hard to understand.

But that I is separate generally because if we identify with that,

In other words,

I am Indian,

I am Russian,

I am Yugoslavian,

I am Czechoslovakian,

I am Bolivian or whatever,

I am Tasmanian,

Whatever.

If we identify with it,

Then that I is separate from another I.

So you identify as Bolivian.

Someone else with all their conditioning from a completely different culture identifies,

I'm Indian.

How do those two people have a relationship?

The two I's can't meet.

You can't have a square peg in a round hole.

There's nothing in common other than the fact that if you took all that I out of the way,

The thing that you would have in common is your humanity,

That all human beings are basically the same.

We all have the same needs,

Pretty well the same.

Well,

We have the basic needs.

We've got our food,

Clothing and shelter.

But we have other basic needs.

We need some semblance of emotional life.

We'd rather be hugged than beaten.

We all need to go to the toilet.

We all need to eat.

We all need to breathe.

We all need to have rest.

So human beings' needs are basically the same.

So therefore,

You could say that therefore humanity is basically the same.

What separates us is our identification with an idea.

That idea being,

I'm Muslim,

I'm Australian,

I'm Christian,

I'm Buddhist,

I'm Taswegian,

I'm Bolivian or whatever.

Identification with that means that ownership of that means that I'm now separate from you.

I don't see you as the same as me.

I see you differently to me.

That is the I.

So the I is identifying with all of its past.

And it may not voluntarily,

Most times it's not voluntarily identifying with the past.

It's just the conditioning of the past is what makes you who you are.

Now,

The moment you have a realization about that,

Where you go,

Hang on a minute,

All of the conditioning of nationalism or conditioning of Christianity or conditioning of Muslim or conditioning of whatever,

My past,

Prevents me from seeing you actually.

My belief in those things,

Because conditioning also leads to belief,

I believe as a Christian,

I believe as a Muslim,

I believe in nationalities,

I believe in this and believe in that.

Belief is you standing on a hill over here and someone else standing on a hill over there.

Therefore,

Is that a state of sanity firstly?

Is that a sane state for humanity?

Is it?

Absolutely not.

Is it a state of well-being?

Is it a state of health,

Mentally,

Emotionally,

Spiritually and ultimately physically?

No,

Because there's huge distress in that division,

Huge distress in not being able to have a relationship with my brothers and sisters on the planet.

So,

The me as the past makes up the now.

Therefore,

I'm not seeing the now,

I'm modifying the now all the time from all of this past,

I'm now becoming and repeating that past into the future.

Now,

If my past,

And it's not if,

My past for all human beings has some pain in it,

Separation,

Death,

Loss,

Whatever,

Trauma,

That now,

Because it's hurtful and painful,

We want to shrink from that,

We don't want to repeat that.

So,

Now we have the emotion of hurt and we have the emotion of fear,

Fear of it being repeated,

Which is a fairly natural state for human beings to be in.

They don't want to be hurt physically,

They don't want to be hurt emotionally,

They don't want to be hurt psychologically,

Twisted and bent,

Out of shape,

They don't want to be hurt spiritually,

So they don't want to be hurt.

So,

We project fear into the future,

We're fearful of the next now,

We're fearful of what could come,

So we're fearful of outcomes.

Now,

Is that a state of health?

No,

It's not a state of health,

That's a state of dis-ease,

You're in a state of disharmony,

Not in a state of harming,

Not in a state of easing,

There's a disassociation,

A dis-regulation in your well-being.

So,

You go,

Well,

Hang on a minute,

When does it stop?

How can I be,

Rather than be in this state of becoming?

Firstly,

That's right,

We come to an impasse,

Because thought can't solve it easily,

Because thought is the past,

Right?

So,

We get to an impasse of,

Can I make a formula for this?

Is there a means of action I can come up with,

With this?

Which is the past,

As the me,

With all of its hurts and fears and divisions,

Trying to produce another solution.

In other words,

Chaos,

Inwardly divided against,

I like this,

I don't like that,

I want this,

I don't want that,

There's not a state of harmony,

There's an inward division,

In other words,

A fragmented mind is wanting now to produce something that's not fragmented,

Which is impossible,

By the way.

So,

Chaos can't produce order,

But realisation can.

Now,

Whether the realisation comes from an accident,

Someone just happens to make a glib statement and then sits with you,

And you just stop,

And you have this realisation,

And suddenly all of the weight of the past disappears,

Or you come to the realisation yourself and go,

What do I want in life?

I want to be well,

What are the things that prevent me being well?

Obviously,

The obvious things,

Diet,

Lifestyle,

Attitudes,

Right?

But also,

I want to be able to get on with others,

What are the things preventing me getting on with others?

And so we see the ending of the slave trade and the ending of slavery in America,

And we see this gradual chipping away of particular divisions over time,

But so slow that,

You know,

We'll be all gone before we get through this stuff at that rate.

When we have the realisation that all the past is the me,

Identifying with that past as Australian or Muslim or Christian or black or white or square-shaped or pyramid-shaped or whatever,

Divides me from another,

If I understand that deeply,

Deeply,

In other words,

The pain that that causes throughout the world by the divisions against countries,

Divisions against beliefs and ideas and ideologies,

Then that ceases in me.

If I don't realise it's poison,

If it's okay in me,

If I justify it in me,

Then I never change.

But when I see that that is dangerous,

That that is a poison deeply,

The same realisation I have if I'm standing on the edge of the cliff and realise that if I take another step I'll die,

When I understand something fully,

I never need to revisit it again.

It's done.

So when I understand that the past as the me prevents relationship with you,

Because all of my memory is preventing a direct relationship with you,

My memory of you or of your kind being Caucasian or your kind being Muslim or your kind being Christian or your kind being Bolivian,

My memory of that may be distorted and horrid.

So therefore can I meet you as you are when you come into the room if you are one of those people that I've had distortions about?

Obviously not.

I can't see you for who you are.

I see you for my memory of you or my associations with what I think you should be or what you are by a distorted past.

So when I have a deep realisation of that,

There is no becoming psychologically.

I'm just being.

The past ceases as the me.

There's other ways to do that,

Which is when I realise that all the energy I give to a narrative of I'm not good enough or if it wasn't for mum or dad or whoever,

Prime minister,

My life would be great and realise that that is a waste of my energy and it's an untruth and I'm perpetuating a myth and perpetuating suffering and a poor me.

When I realise that,

That's also a disillusion of the me that dissolves it.

So being versus becoming is interesting.

That being links into the presence of the present.

That being means to be present.

I'm a human being,

Not a human becoming.

I think that's a great statement.

But most of us are human becomeings.

We're not meant to be human becomeings.

We're meant to be human beings.

So when we understand that firstly,

That weight of the past as a man,

It ceases in that revelation.

What happens by being present means that when we're in a state of being,

It means we are in the present.

In other words,

I'm listening.

You have to be in the present to have a realisation of something like that.

You have to have something hit you where you go,

Wow,

Bigotry is obscene and my bigotry against another because of this,

That or the other or the colour of their skin or their language or the way they look.

There's a division.

If you see that deeply,

Then you won't be anti-anything.

But the more I'm free of my psychological hurts and my psychological past as the me and I'm now being and I'm present and more often present than not present by being present and doing things like my weight of my body in the seat,

Feet on the floor,

Hands,

Breathing.

So I start doing proactive present tools,

Tools that bring me to being present,

Where I'm mindful.

If I said to you,

Click your fingers,

You're present.

It's right there,

Right?

Bam.

When you are now being,

You are in the presence of the present,

Which means what?

You're connected to that which is timeless.

You're not now stuck in psychological time as the past projecting into the future.

You're now present.

You're here with something that's living,

Dynamic and we could say eternal.

We can say eternal in parenthesis because we don't know what's going to occur in eternity,

Right?

We don't know what's going to occur down the road.

So we can't say infinite actually with anything,

Can we?

We can't say something is infinite.

We can't say something is eternal.

But from our observation right now,

We have something that is timeless and seemingly eternal that has no beginning and no end,

Which is the timeless now.

So when I'm in the presence of that,

It's the first and only time that I may have,

And human beings do this a little bit anyway throughout the day,

Where they're present,

They're off again.

Going over stuff from the past,

Well,

I've got to do this tomorrow,

I've got to meet my sister,

And oh no,

I don't get all of that.

So we've got all the psychological jumble comes back in and then we're present again,

And then we're off again,

And then we're back,

And we're off again,

We're back.

And more often than not,

You're away than being present.

So we've talked about this as an amplification of how you can regenerate your energy.

Think about the amount of chi in your system that has been dissipated through conflict.

As the me,

All the worry,

All the anxiety of the future,

All I'm not good enough,

The self-image,

The story,

How much of that you've gone over,

How many times have you gone into that room in your life?

It's huge,

Really.

It's in the majority of your life to some degree,

Right?

And someone says to you,

Okay,

Now be present,

Breathe,

Be right here,

Feel the weight of your body,

Do conscious breath.

What does that feel like after doing that?

Pay attention to it,

Bring mindfulness to being here now.

The moment you're doing that,

You are in this period of timelessness,

You're in this period of time that's timeless.

That's a slice of eternity,

If we can use that word eternal or infinite,

Right?

We'll use it for now until I get reprimanded by the end of the universe.

So we can use this term that we're plugged into that.

And I say to you that that's the time your chi recharges.

That's the time that you can potentially,

And this is theory,

But it might turn out to be fact,

That we talked about entropy,

Which is the decaying of things.

Really,

You could say it's positive entropic effect or a positive entropy.

It's in other words,

Moving from the center out and things are falling apart.

The term I use is negative entropic effect or a negative entropy,

Which is regeneration from the outside to the center,

Which is what occurs when you're repairing a cut,

Or a virus disappears,

Or you're healing.

So for a period of time,

You are in a negative entropic state by living,

Because you're not just in decay,

You're not just falling apart,

Otherwise you'd be dead within six months or something,

Right?

But you don't,

You hang in there for years and years and years,

And illness comes,

Illness goes,

Injuries come,

They repair.

So for a period of time,

Matter as you is going against the normal laws of the universe,

Which is in a state of chaos and falling apart.

So living,

The atoms in you are repairing,

Your system is repairing and regenerating for a period of time,

So that's a negative entropic state,

Right?

It's going against chaos.

It's like chaos happens,

It repairs,

It comes back.

A bit more chaos happens,

It comes back to order,

Some semblance of order.

I'm saying to you as a theory,

But as an observation that I've made,

That I feel is true,

That when you are in that timeless now,

When you are here and you're breathing and you're conscious of where you are,

The weight of your body in the seat and the sounds around you,

And you're not thinking about stuff,

Not projecting into the future,

That you're plugged into something that's regenerating you.

And actually in that state,

I posit and put forward that you are actually stopping time in your system.

Now I'm saying to you as a practice in your life,

To be able to do that more often.

So therefore,

Being versus becoming is fairly evident,

And when we get to this understanding and we're being,

We're now in the presence of the present,

Which for me means that you are touching that which is eternal,

Touching that which I'm going to say is sacred,

And therefore you could say,

If you like,

That that's the only time and place that you could potentially touch dog's belt backward.

There's no other time or place.

So if it exists,

If something eternal and sacred and original exists,

Something omnipotent exists,

Then that's the only place that you could possibly find it.

So the things that prevent you seeing it in the first place are the fact that you're stuck in becoming.